I am terribly torn right now between my "I CAN DO IT ALL MYSELF!" nature and the fact that I clearly can't do all of the packing myself. Pain levels have been augh. But I feel like if I enlist help, I'll have to hover and guide a lot; as the person who'll also be doing the bulk of the unpacking, I really need to know where everything is.

*flail*

Hi.

Question. Is anyone willing and able to take over organizing the Backup Project at Boskone? I just have a lot more to do that I did when I signed on for that, and given that it's the last weekend of packing pre-move, I may well not be on-site for the whole con. I have finally been informed of the fan-table hours: 4-9 on Friday, 10-6 on Saturday, 10-3 on Sunday. I have the table reserved and, thanks to several wonderful readers, I've ordered the buttons. You would just need to wrangle people for the table. Any takers?

I didn't get around to my closet yesterday, so I'll do that today. A bunch of what's in there is already storage stuff that'll go to the attic; the one storage space we've had in this house is the upstairs closets. The closets in the new house are maybe half as deep as those (but twice as wide and deep as the other closets), but we won't need to store comics boxes and Elayna's preschool art and whatnot in them. Attic! Yay! And the stuff we've been stockpiling for charity donation is out on the curb for pickup today, so we just gained a *lot* of space to stage stuff.

We will hopefully know for sure today whether our move day is Saturday 2/25. It probably is. The property manager's on vacation in Florida, so responses are delayed.

Thanks for the recs on that "Up Your Score" SAT prep book, y'all! I got Elayna to start reading it last night (she does not like her new structure, which is come home from school/rehearsal, snack, do homework, pack a box or you get no TV time, then dinner), and she actually required some nudging to put it down. She went upstairs for her shower rattling off things she'd already learned in her brief reading. "It's all about the psychology of the test! I can do that!"

I packed for my move from Philadelphia to Tennessee in late July, in a third-floor apartment with AC in only one room, during a heat wave with, like, 95% humidity. It was probably the only move (of many) where I got friends to help, assigned each a room, and let them have at it.

You know what? All my stuff ended up in Tennessee. Nothing broke, because I only had friends I trusted help pack. They labeled the boxes with general descriptions, but because I knew what room each had, I had a vague notion of what would be inside each box, or which set of boxes to search in for something.

Yes, there was a good deal of, "where the hell is X?!!?" when I started unpacking. But I had the energy to unpack because I hadn't done it all myself or spent my time hovering and worrying. And the fresh juxtaposition of items in each box actually helped me be more critical of what I chose to move and would choose to keep. It was scary as hell. But it was the healthy thing to do.

I just now noticed that you have a Valentinr. I am not giving out my email address to yet one more random thing I'm probably never going to use again, but I did decide I would leave a valentine for anybody who wanted one.

So here is yours:

<3<3<3<3<3Roses are red,I write poetry badly,When your daughter graduates she should head for South Hadley.<3<3<3<3<3

Hi there! I'm just back from being away from LJ for a while and I see that you're moving? Hopefully this is a positive move - moving is stressful under the best of conditions - and you're all happy in your new place. And I totally understand about needing to pack your stuff yourself even if you lack the spoons to do it - A. is the same way, which always complicates our moves. (I don't think it's a coincidence that when my life gets stressful, I start having nightmares about moving.) Anyway, I hope your move goes well and I plan to be on LJ more to see you around. (/rambling)

It's going to be a very good move! It's just physically difficult. :( I did manage to accept help yesterday, but I continue to be very frustrated at how little I can do without being struck down by pain.

It does sound like it's going to be a great move! More to the point, it sounds like it's going to be a great place to live once you get moved. Hurray for more money, less stress, stair railings, closets, and other good things!

"...part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time."~~"Case of You", Joni Mitchell

"There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in." ~~"Anthem", Leonard Cohen

"If you wanna be immortal, you gotta have something to trade in." ~~"Anything", Foetus

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."~~George Bernard Shaw

"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."~~Terence McKenna

"When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other."~~Rob Sheffield

"I have a sickness in the brain. I'm allowed to make no sense to you puny mortals with your fully operational head-meat."~~Spider Jerusalem

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."~~Lois McMaster Bujold

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."~~Albert Camus

"Being able to speak the unspeakable is very powerful. If we can hear another person express where they get stuck, or lost, or repeat a negative pattern, it builds a bridge."~~SARK

"Myths and legends die hard in America."~~Hunter S. Thompson

"Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible."~~Edwin Land

"Having faced the fire of your initiation and survived its heat, you can now serve others in a whole new way. By being a living testimony to life transformed, you carry in your cells a sacred knowledge, and in your mind and heart a sacred fire. It's not the fire of youth but the fire of Prometheus, who emerged with the light that would light the world. It's a light that you only could have gotten from having faced some version of your personal hell, and now you are inoculated to the fires which rage around us. Sometimes it is fire that puts out fire, and such is the fire that now burns in you. This is not the fire of your destruction but of your victory. It is the fire of the middle years."~~Marianne Williamson

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed…what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness…it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealously among the prime themes of literature."~~Virginia Woolf

"The Universe puts us in places were we can learn. They are never easy places, but they are right. Wherever we are is the right place, at the right time. The pain that sometimes comes is part of the process of constantly being born."

"I will tell you a great secret, Captain, perhaps the greatest secret of all time: The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make up this station, and the nebula outside - that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff. We are the Universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And, as we have both learned, sometimes the Universe requires a change of perspective."~~Delenn, Babylon 5

I am kenning all I canShe and I, me and my mind,Writing hard for the one true thingThat lets you let me inBeguiling what must to gain the trust of the minutemenI am worth investing inand I never stop spinning.

Kenning yarns out of my skinWith a leaky borrowed penSwirling stars and stories inWill you let the light leak in?